piggy cake

To go along with the piggy cookies that I made in my last post, I also made a piggy cake.  To get the shape of the piggy head, I used the same cake pan that I used for my Hello Kitty shaped cake.  I figured the shape of the face and the ears could be easily turned into a pig! 

Since the birthday girl loves chocolate, I baked two layers of my favorite chocolate cake, and then filled it with a rich chocolate mousse (the same chocolate mousse recipe that I used to fill my heart surprise cake, as well as the various triple chocolate mousse cakes that I've made.)  Once filled and stacked, I cut off Hello Kitty's bow and carved the cake a bit to further shape the piggy ears.  Then I covered it with pink cream cheese frosting.

After the crumb coat of frosting was applied, I piped black frosting for the eyes and the outline of the snout.  Then I filled in the piggy face with the pink frosting, using a star tip.

I thought the resulting piggy cake was really cute, although next time I'd probably do an extra layer of frosting for the snout, so that it would be raised a bit higher than the rest of the face.  In any case, I hope the birthday girl enjoyed her piggy cake and cookies!  Happy Birthday!

pool party piggy cookies

My friend Cindy recently introduced me to her friend Monica, who asked me to make cookie favors for her daughter's upcoming birthday party.  Since her daughter loves pigs, she wanted them to be piggy cookies.  But not just regular piggy cookies - she wanted the pigs to be standing upright, and wearing green bikinis!  It was going to be a pool party after all, and her daughter's favorite color is green.

Since I only had a standard piggy cookie cutter of a pig from the side-view, I asked my hubby to make me another custom cookie cutter.  But instead of making it from a soda can like he did the last time, he bought special thin sheets of copper, specifically meant for things like cookie cutters.  Awesome!  All I had to do was draw him an outline of the piggy, and he did the rest.

Armed with my brand-new shiny copper cookie cutter, I set out to make the cookies using my favorite homemade sugar cookie recipe, but you could of course your store bought.  After they finished baking, I outlined a border with bright pink royal icing, and then flooded them with a thinner consistency icing.  Once that dried overnight, I outlined them with pink once more, and then added black royal icing for the eyes, nose, and belly button.

Finally, I added the green bikinis.  The pigs were adorable yet hilarious at the same time.  They actually made me laugh out loud.  But in a good way.

Stay tuned for my next post, which features the piggy cake that I made to go along with these cookies!

*** Update: The piggy cake post can be found here!